‘Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know…’
Steven Spielberg will turn 80 this year, but his passion for cinema burns as brightly as ever (as anyone who listened to his recent appearance on the Rewatchables podcast discussing 2001: A Space Odyssey can attest to). His cultural cache is such that any new Spielberg film still feels like an event. Disclosure Day seems to have been dismissed by a bunch of edgelord film school tossers on social media, but while it certainly isn’t perfect, it’s still a great time at the movies, and we don’t know how many more opportunities we’re gonna get to be thrilled by Steven Spielberg in a movie theatre…
Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a Kansas City TV meteorologist, and Daniel Kelner (Josh O’Connor), a cybersecurity expert, find themselves embroiled in a conspiracy theory that suggests the existence of alien lifeforms. On their tail is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the head of a shady, non-governmental corporation. The starry cast is rounded out by Eve Hewson as Daniel’s courageous girlfriend, Wyatt Russell as Margaret’s less effective boyfriend and Colman Domingo as Daniel’s co-conspirator.
While this probably won’t be the last Spielberg film, it could well be the last time he gets the full band back together. This is the fourth collaboration between Spielberg, director of photography Janusz Kamiński, writer David Koepp and composer John Williams (after The Lost World, War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) and given the fact that John Williams recently turned 94, it feels unlikely that this quartet will reunite again. I’d love to say that Disclosure Day sees all of them firing on all cylinders but that wouldn’t quite be true.
Based on an original idea from Spielberg himself, Disclosure Day sees the old master reckoning with themes he first explored way back in 1977 with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s no surprise that he has returned to the concept of extraterrestrial life throughout his career, but every time he does, he’s always more interested in what the aliens say about us than the aliens themselves. His latest foray into science fiction is no different. Here he chooses to use Disclosure Day as a way to explore the role of legacy media in modern day society, and while the fact that the film pretty much ignores social media is misguided at best and utterly out of touch at worst, it still fascinating to see Spielberg playing in this sandpit (presumably) one last time.
What a joy to catch this thing in a cinema. I can forgive some dodgy CGI when taking into account how beautifully shot and lit the film is. Sure, some of Koepp’s dialogue is too on the nose, and the whole thing is a little too earnest, but I was dazzled by Blunt’s showstopping performance, and Williams’ typically assured score. I found the final montage sequence incredibly moving. There is a car chase culminating in a heart-stopping confrontation on a train that had me chuckling at the audacity of it all. When it comes to an old-fashioned blockbuster, there is simply nobody better.
